Friday 15 April 2016

Excerpt: Hairy Tales by Clifford James Hayes


Welcome to my tour stop for "Hairy Tales" by Clifford James Hayes.  Please refer the tour page for the full list of bloggers who are participating in this tour.

Name: Hairy Tales: A Collection of Stories for Naughty Boys and Girls
Author: Clifford James Hayes
Release Date: February 19, 2016
Genre: Children's
Paperback: 148 pages
ISBN-10: 1530133785
ISBN-13: 978-1530133789
Buy @ Amazon



Fans of quirky humour will love these Hairy Tales! Eleven different stories full of rhymes, morals and wit - or just plain silliness and absurdity! Great fun for children and adults alike.

Join The Ugly Mermaid on her amazing undersea quest to discover why she’s so hideous, and find out why Veronica the Velociraptor has such very bad teeth! Discover Aubrey’s Smelly Adventure in the Land of Bernards, and learn that it can be cool to be different in Shipwreck'd Sarah and the Silly-Looking Pirates! Are you brave enough to meet the hideous, toad-fearing Grandma Grunt … and what dreadful fate awaits Horrid Horatia, the fearsome lady-slug? Baron Tuskogee pays a terrible price for his greed in The Walrus Story, stinky old Podge the pig revolts in more ways than one, and the dreaded Lurgatron threatens to take over the world!

All this (and a great deal more!) can be found in Hairy Tales! New, revised edition.

EXCERPT

GRANDMA GRUNT …

When you think of grandmas, you probably think of nice, scented old ladies - the kind of doddery old dears who drink endless cups of tea and spoil their grandchildren with sugary, stodgy home-made cakes. Your grannie is there to make you feel safe, warm and all gooey inside.
Grannies have cuddly, nursey mannerisms and a slightly bonkers too-old-to-care approach to life; they allow their grandchildren to get away with all manner of slightly naughty acts and misdemeanors. Eating too much cake? Breaking a china plate? Going to bed without cleaning your teeth? Such naughtiness may NEVER be allowed at home, but a grannie will usually find childish hijinks, tomfoolery and slovenliness to be quite acceptable when you stay at her place.
All this talk of sweet old dears gurgling tea and baking bad-for-you sugary cakes may possibly remind you of enjoyable visits to your OWN grandmother - and as a consequence it may give you soft, fluffy memories of never being scolded, of endlessly eating candy until you felt queasy and of always being well looked after.
Unfortunately, these were NOT the memories of Edgar and Wilhelmina Grunt. The grandmother of Edgar and Wilhelmina Grunt was NOT a nice, scented old lady. The grandmother of Edgar and Wilhelmina Grunt was SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY.
The grandmother of Edgar and Wilhelmina Grunt did not make sugary cakes, nor dish out too much candy. The grandmother of Edgar and Wilhelmina Grunt did NOT make you feel warm and squishy inside.
Imagine a grandma with a strong, lingering, rotten-vegetably smell - the kind of putrid stench that made you cough up a little bit of sick every time you got downwind of her! Imagine a grandma who spoke words so rude even a foul-mouthed football hooligan would be too embarrassed to repeat them. Imagine a grandma that liked to encourage spiders and other creepy-crawly things to live in every nook and cranny of her dilapidated, unclean home, and who fed her grandchildren food off plates that had never been washed in over forty years. Imagine a grandma with a mountain-range of lumps over every inch of exposed flesh, and with hairy moles on her skin that looked like baby tarantulas! Not to mention the coarse, bristly hair that grew in the strangest of places (even out of the gums between her blackened teeth)!
NOW you’re getting a picture of Edgar and Wilhelmina Grunt’s grandmother. To top it all, their grandmother was quite mad. An absolute fruitcake, in fact. Her favourite book was THE FROGS OF WAR - a woeful tale about pond-life taking over the world. Grandma Grunt was CONVINCED the book was a prophecy – and that one day the world would be taken over by frogs, toads, newts and salamanders. She read the bleak, miserable book again and again and again to her terrified grandchildren, filling their heads with images of the frog wars to come ...

Soldier toads, and frogs of war,
Built for fighting, blood and gore.
Hop o’er land, break down your door,
Take it all, then take some more!
We’re the toads and frogs of war,
Croak and ribit, belch and roar!

She called the book ‘The Froggy Scriptures’, and read terrifying chapters of it to Edgar and Wilhelmina every time they came to stay. Once satisfied she’d scared the living daylights out of her grandchildren, Grandma Grunt made them eat ‘GROT’ - a grey, semi-liquid concoction of her own design. Part-porridge, part-soup, and part whatever-was-found-in-the-backyard. Anything unfortunate enough to be slow and easy to catch often went into her vat of Grot - she had a particular fancy for snails and slugs, and even squeezed the ‘juice’ out of a dead seagull once, in order to add it to the putrid gruel.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Clifford James Hayes is an occasional author and independent publisher, and has to date written and illustrated over a dozen books in different genres (childrens’ tales, historical fantasy, comedic science fiction and biographical). His ‘day job’ is running his graphic design business (www.hayesdesign.co.uk) where his specialism is the design of books and cd/albums. Inspirations for his books include Roald Dahl, Monty Python, Rik Mayall, Spike Milligan and (most importantly) the mad outpourings of his young daughter, Poppy, to whom all his books are dedicated. For more info please get in touch via www.hayesdesign.co.uk.




Thursday 14 April 2016

Cover Reveal: On the Rebound by Jim Cangany

Welcome to the cover reveal of "The Sway" by Ruby Knight.  The Sway is a fantasy novel, releasing on 17 May 2016.

Title: The Sway
Author: Ruby Knight
Publisher: Penner Publishing
Genre: Fantasy
Release Date: 17 May 2016


ABOUT THE BOOK:

Her mission is to get close to him for inside information. 
His mission is to kidnap her for a supernatural militant group. 

Recruited in her teens for a life of espionage, Julia Caldwell, now 19, is theyoungest CIA agent on record. Her mission is simple: get close to Cole Thomas for intel on his father, a known and dangerous weapons dealer. As she grows closer to Cole, something is off. He might not be who she thinks he is. And worse, his mission will put an end to hers.

Always believing the government's story that her purpose in life was to keep the world safe, Julia doesn't know who to trust or who to believe. But now, THE SWAY has a different story—a different purpose for her—that goes well beyond all she ever imagined.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Ruby wrote her first book during her senior year of college and hasn’t stopped writing since. She graduated with a degree in History and a minor in Psychology. When she isn’t manically writing stories on her laptop,  coaching a high school dance team and teaching high school history– You can find her playing with her adorable little boy. She is from San Diego but was raised in Northern Utah. Her dad nicknamed her Rube at a young age and it always stuck. She currently lives in Utah under the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains. Ruby loves to read all things New Adult and Young Adult. She is a wannabe yogi and shamelessly indulges in TV shows like Quantico, Scandal, and The Blacklist. You might find her with a Diet Dr Pepper with coconut flavor in it on most days, as this is what she considers to be water.

Connect with Ruby at her Website, Facebook and Twitter.



This event is organized by Pen & Ink Book Tours.



Tuesday 12 April 2016

Release Event: Drawn to Her by Jenna Harte

Welcome to the release event of Drawn to Her, Book 1 of the Southern Heat series by Jenna Harte. This is a sweet contemporary romance, which will make you swoon.  Read on to know more...

Title: Drawn to Her
Serie: Southern Heat #1
Author: Jenna Harte
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Penner Publishing
Release Date: 12-April-2016
Buy NOW at Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo


ABOUT THE BOOK:

Feisty and outspoken, Lexie McKenna will do anything to protect her cantankerous and ailing patient—even if it means going up against his cold and calculating, but sexy and irresistible grandson. After all, as a nurse, her number one priority is her patient.
Drake Carmichael doesn’t trust the nurse who’s taking care of his grandfather—despite how adorable and compassionate she seems. He refuses to let her get her grips into their hard-earned money. But as the two square off and begin to battle about what is best for the dying man, Lexie and Drake realize they know very little about each other and that first impressions are deceiving. Once they finally give into their desires, the battle has only just begin.
With a fight between family and fortune, love and lust, will either one be able to find the southern comfort they both truly crave?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Jenna Harte is a die-hard romantic writing about characters who are passionate about and committed to each other, and frequently getting into trouble. She is the author of the Valentine Mysteries, the first of which, “Deadly Valentine,” reached the quarter-finals in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award in 2013. She has a bundle of stories filled with romance, mystery and even time travel rattling around in her head and is eager for the day when a device is invented allowing her to download what’s in her brain onto her computer. When she’s not telling stories, she works by day as a freelance writer, author, blogger and online entrepreneur. She lives in central Virginia with her husband, two college-bound children and a fat cat.
Connect with Jenna on Twitter, Goodreads, Facebook, Instagram & Pinterest.
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This event was organized by Pen & Ink Book Tours.
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